Top Reasons Why Your eCommerce Site Needs To Be Mobile-Friendly

11/21/2017 2:41 PM

When you’re running an eCommerce business, it’s essential to optimize and design the site based on the users’ behavior, not just for search engines.

Today, mobile traffic for online stores accounts for more than 50% of the entire visits. This means that you should provide the best user experience for desktop AND mobile users.

Is your eCommerce site mobile-friendly? If it’s not, then continue reading to find out why it should be and how your business can benefit from it.

Mobile transactions have increased over the years

And they will continue to grow as more eCommerce businesses understand the importance of optimizing not only the product pages but the checkout flow as well.

Studies have shown that people tend to buy stuff online when they’re sitting in traffic, killing time between meetings, or when they’re waiting in line or for the bus. These people won’t wait until they get home and place the order - they will do it during those few minutes they have to spare.

User behavior is different on mobile devices

Internet users are extremely impatient, especially when they’re browsing on their mobile devices. In fact, studies show that more than half of your online store’s visitors will leave the site if it doesn't load in three seconds.

Sites that are not mobile-friendly will load extremely slow, and even if a visitor decides to wait, the user experience will not be the best for them. So speed is of the essence for mobile devices.

Moreover, you should optimize your product landing pages as well. While browsing on a desktop, visitors spend more time reading information about products. For the mobile version, you should keep things as brief as possible.

Google loves mobile-friendly websites

Every eCommerce business owner wants for their site to rank higher than the competition. But without a solid SEO strategy, chances for this to happen are slim.

That’s why you should rely on optimizing your site for mobile devices.

Why? Because in 2015, Google introduced a new algorithm which makes mobile-friendly websites more visible in search engine results. Organic traffic is significant for eCommerce businesses due to the competition so you should do everything you can for your site to appear in search results.

The more clicks your pages will receive from organic search, the more you will increase your ranking for certain keywords.

Google is connected to mobile-friendly websites in another way as well: the majority of online stores’ traffic comes from organic search. So if 50% of your visitors are using a mobile device when they’re browsing your site, they need to at least leave with a good impression of your site so that they’d have a reason to come back.

Mobile-Friendly Or Not, Here They Come

Try to put yourself just for a few seconds in your customer's shoes.

Would you patiently wait for an online store to load just to realize that you have to pinch the touch screen to be able to use the site?

No one has time for that.

If you want to differentiate your eCommerce business and have a real shot at beating your competition, then having a mobile-friendly is certainly one way to do it.